Playing Catch Up

I've really had my nose to the grindstone these past several months--finishing up commissions, making Christmas presents, caring for sick family members, hosting various pipemakers and aspiring pipemakers, attending to my honey-do list, interviews and photo shoots for P & T, the list goes on. With all that, I've not had much of an opportunity to post to my blog or even my twitter feed. My plan is to spend January updating my website, posting regularly to my blog, and twittering about my ongoing projects in the shop. In the mean time, here's a little update on what I've been doing for the past couple months. Here is a sampling of pieces completed in the latter months of 2009. I hope you enjoy. If you'd like to get regular updates but haven't signed up yet, please feel free to e-mail me. Thanks for a great 2009! Hope you all enjoy the photos.

Todd

This is a little nosewarmer blowfish with boxwood cap and a very thin sliver of mammoth ivory just because. When I was working with Lars one time, I asked him why he had capped a shank face with ivory when it would never be seen. He responded by saying simply, "This is just a way to say 'Lars was here also.'" I've heard it said that one definition of quality is that even the things you can't see are done well.

This is a very special Elephant's foot. Blocks that will give you both the proper grain orientation and a significantly long shank are one in a million. Pipemaking is always a collaborative effort with the raw materials one uses to create.

This is a piece I created while hosting pipemaker Charles Cole. He wanted to see the techniques required to create this effect. This is a beautiful piece of spalted maple, and it must be said that such a stem/shank treatment is necessarily an homage to my good friend, Jody Davis.

Simply put, this is, in my opinion, the best blowfish, and perhaps the best pipe, I've ever made. I shaped this during my interview with P & T magazine about a month ago. The ebonite rod required for the stem was about 3" in diameter!

These are the three smooth Christmas pipes for 2009. The stems are antique bakelite in Jade and Crimson.

This is a magnum Samurai Volcano, the last piece of 2009. I struggled to decide whether to blast this or keep it smooth. The growth rings on this pipe are so prominent that it would have been unreal if blasted. That said, obscuring grain like this would have been criminal.

A New Schule

I will start by saying that I credit my own teachers--especially Tom Eltang--for taking the time to help me develop my skills some ten or so years ago. This is not a process that took place over the course of an afternoon or weekend, but rather several years. Because of Tom's generosity, I feel and have felt a sense of obligation to share my own expertise with other aspiring carvers. Over the years, I've had the pleasure of working with and helping to supplement the skill sets of some very talented carvers, including Jeff Gracik, Brad Pohlmann, Adam Davidson, and Steve Morisette. These are guys who desperately wanted to learn, and to create. All of them had aspirations of becoming professional carvers--actually moving from hobbyists to working artists, and I would affirm that this is fundamentally different than simply wanting to make a few nice looking pipes each year.

Two rusticated Cutties. This is the first shape Tom ever taught me to make.

Love Geiger, a Swedish pipemaker who himself made his way from talented hobbyist to full-time professional recently said this about the journey.

" I believe that if you are serious about making pipes and really learning you will seek the live advice of a professional, by one on one interaction or spending the cash to visit them..

In this time we don't have the luxury of real apprenticeship, but just visiting a maker you look up to for a day or a few hours will grant so much more and give you a feeling what it takes and is like making pipes for a living.

So many have romantic dreams of "making it" and living off selling their smokable art but more have failed than succeeded in this, because it isn’t easy even with natural talent ect.
It requires discipline, luck, good connections and living on a tight budget for years for most of us. And even then there are no guarantees.

The sooner one gets a feeling of how it really is like " living with pipes" behind the glamour and $1000+ pipes they can set their goal on what level they would like to achieve and what they want to get out of it..Frustration and poverty is no fun... having a good hobby can be much more rewarding for most..

I know of very few if any professionals who have not in some way at some point visited other more experienced makers to learn.. I've done so a few times and intend to do so again as for me it is so inspiring and a kick in the butt to get productive.

Personally it took me 3 years of fooling around in the shop and wasting money on the "wrong" tools and methods before I finally did and even if it might cost you a plane ticket in the long run money could be saved.. "

I think there's great wisdom in what Love has to say here. Being a real live working artist is not easy. Those who imagine otherwise are simply delusional. It is a great blessing to make a living doing something that you love, but it requires sacrifice, often financial sacrifice, and far more dedication than most ever imagine. It also requires great skill, a very keen eye, and an understanding--innate or developed--of fundamental design principles. If you want to make pipes successfully you're going to have to develop these skills. This is not something that happens overnight, and it is not something that can happen simply by poking around on internet bulletin boards. 

New pipemakers are "made" by older pipemakers, not by self-important collectors, not by eBay, and not by themselves. In the Presbyterian church, an individual with a call to ministry is said to be "under the care" of his/her presbytery. This is a process that ensures an individual is provided with the necessary care, encouragement, wisdom, and example to succeed. I would advocate a similar model for aspiring pipemakers, and encourage other established pipemakers to engage in the process as tutors. 

Pipemaking is a dying art. In the past decade we have lost Sixten Ivarsson, Bo Nordh, and Jorn Micke. Poul Rasmussen has been gone for many years now. More recently Peter Hedegaard has died. Much of what is known and passed on about pipemaking lies in the hands and heads of masters who have been taught by masters. The only way for that knowledge to continue is to train new masters, and to that I am resolutely committed.